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by mattygroves



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: 80s nostalgia, AU-E.T., Ancient!Rodney, First Kiss, Kid!John, Kid!Rodney, M/M, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, You heard me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:21:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8438344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mattygroves/pseuds/mattygroves
Summary: "John wasn’t all that surprised when the Air Force finally admitted to the existence of aliens. He’d known about them for a long time."Or, the one where John and Rodney meet as kids when Rodney crash lands his ship in John's backyard. Basically.





	

_2004, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado_

John wasn’t all that surprised when the Air Force finally admitted to the existence of aliens. He’d known about them for a long time. Now, standing in front of the Stargate as it settled into a blue puddle of possibility, he heard a familiar voice in the back of his mind, _“It’s a Stargate. A gate to the stars? Look, I don’t have time to explain everything—“_

_1982, Northern California_

The suburb wound it’s way up toward the mountain, tucked into her curves as she resolved into forest beyond.

“I want to go home,” Davey complained as they trudged through the underbrush with their flashlights, the low pine branches brushing against their shoulders.

John held back a sigh. Davey was only five, so he was trying to cut him some slack.

“Just a little farther,” he said.

“Mom said we could watch _Night Rider_ ,” Davey whined.

Before John could answer, a bright figure jumped into their path, emitting a high-pitched yowl. Davey screamed and threw himself at John, knocking the wind out of him. Then the figure giggled hysterically.

“Geez, Darren, do you have to be such a jackass?” John yelled at his friend.

“Yeah, jackass,” Davey said, still clutching at John’s arm.

“Don’t tell mom I said that, okay?”

“Come on,” said Darren, pulling the light grey hoodie off his head. That, paired with acid wash jeans and an industrial strength flashlight stolen from his dad’s garage, had contrived to give him a ghostly appearance. “Rajeev is waiting. You guys should have seen your faces.”

He peeled off in another fit of laughter as they followed him further into the woods. A minute later, they reached the clearing full of jury-rigged electronic equipment.

“Oh, good, you guys made it,” Rajeev said, pushing up his plastic-framed glasses.

The Midnight Meeting of the Hamilton Middle School Astronomy and Extra-Terrestrial Appreciation Club had come to order. It was actually eight PM, but it was a school night so they had to be flexible.

Rajeev had already set up the generator next to the radio tower that held the tallest antenna in the area. Sitting above the mountain town’s relatively thin atmosphere, the antenna gave them a decent chance of broadcasting their signal into space.

John started fiddling with the connections, making sure nothing had wiggled loose during the bumpy ride in Darren’s old Radio Flyer. He gently placed the needle on the record they’d made at the mall.

 _“Uh, hi,"_ John heard his own voice come through the scratchy speakers on the portable player. Darren’s giggle and Rajeev’s shushing him came through, too. _“My name is John Sheppard. I’m thirteen years old and if you’re from outer space, I’d like to meet you.”_

He stepped back to look up at the sky. It stretched out above the trees, clear and moonless.

_“I’m president of the Hamilton Middle School Astronomy and Extra-Terrestrial Appreciation Club. This is Darren Stevens, our UFO expert—”_

_“Hi!”_

_“—And Rajeev Patel, our technical specialist.”_

_“Hey.”_

_“If you’re out there, we mean you no harm and just want to learn about your world, so, um, thanks in advance.”_

_“What do eat for breakfast?”_ Darren’s voice broke in loudly. _“Say hi to Voyager for us!”_

 _“Darren, shut up!”_ Rajeev said, and then the recording devolved into laughter and the sounds of shoving, followed by the attendant’s voice telling them to quit roughhousing and get out of the booth this instant.

An hour later, Davey was asleep on a pile of blankets while the rest of them played cards around Darren’s dad’s flashlight. John stifled a yawn and looked at his watch. His mom said she’d be home by 10:30, so he should probably wake Davey and drag him home soon. He was just about to say something when the ground under them starting shaking and the record they’d been resetting all evening scratched and stopped playing.

“What the hell?” Darren said, snatching up the flashlight and shining it around the clearing. As he shone the flashlight over their heads, it glinted off something dark and metallic that seemed to appear out of nowhere directly above them. The thing—ship—UFO came in fast, the force of its landing sending clods of dirt raining down on them.

John had just managed to grab Davey and pull him out of the way as a wave of dirt washed over their equipment. As the dust settled, the boys cautiously looked up from where they had flung themselves, Darren still clutching the now cracked flashlight. With shaking hands, he pointed it toward the squat tubular vessel. One end opened up and a backlit humanoid figure appeared. It took a step toward them, a faint blue light emanating from its chest and growing until it was almost blinding.

“Run!” Darren yelled, and nobody argued. They left their ruined equipment and fled down the mountain.

***

Davey held it together as they ran, but when they finally slammed the front door and locked the deadbolt, he sobbed in John’s arms where they collapsed, leaning against the door. With some coaxing and the promise of Jell-O, John got him to take a bath, and by the time the Jell-O was eaten and Davey tucked up in bed, sleep took the upper hand over terror.

John showered the dirt off and got into his pajamas, but he was still playing on his Commadore 64 (a recent gift from his absent father) when Jules Sheppard got home.

“Hey, honey,” she said, dropping a kiss on his forehead. “What are you doing still up? It’s a school night.”

“Just couldn’t sleep,” he shrugged.

“Are you upset about my date?” she asked softly, kneeling by his desk chair. She smelled like perfume, the new perfume she’d switched to after his dad left.

“No.” John kept his eyes focused on his screen.

“Because I’m not trying to replace your father, I just want you to know that.”

“I don’t care if you replace him, I hate his guts.” He tried to ignore the stinging in his eyes.

“Hey, Johnny, it’s okay,” she pulled him into a hug. He accepted it stiffly for a moment before burying his face in her shoulder. “You’re always going to come first with me, you know that, right? You and Davey. Always.”

“Okay.”

“Now get some sleep. I don’t want to hear from Mrs. Sneider that you fell asleep in class again.”

“It’s not my fault she makes algebra so boring. She always gets mad when I don’t show my work,” he grinned. “Especially when I get a hundred percent.”

“Sleep,” she said again, ruffling his cowlicks. She wore her own hair in a long and purposefully wild permed style, hiding any evidence of where John’s unruly hair came from.

***

The next day, Darren was grounded for borrowing his dad’s expensive flashlight without permission and breaking it under mysterious circumstances, and Rajeev had peewee football practice. John’s dad had tried to get him to join too, but John had chosen track and field to be contrary, only to realize a few meets in that he loved it.

Davey was safely left at a friend’s house under strict orders not to squeal about their adventure the night before, and their mom was still at her job as assistant manager at the local bottling plant, so John trudged back up the mountain alone to see if any of their equipment was salvageable. He knew he should wait for his friends, but something within him kept urging him to revisit the clearing. Packing his bb gun, and snacks in case he got hungry, he left his bike at the end of the road and followed the footpath up to the clearing.

The crater from last night’s crash was still visible, but the ship was gone. John’s heart sank as he surveyed the tangle of broken equipment. His mom was really not going to be happy about him ruining her record player. In the summers, she liked to pack up a box of 45s and a picnic and take it to the park. She would lounge on a blanket while John and Davey played, always seeming to have just the right song for the moment.

John saw a blip out of the corner of his eye and turned to see the ship, briefly, before it blinked out again. Never one to shy away from danger, John slowly approached the empty space where the ship had appeared. His outstretched hand made contact, the invisible metal cool to the touch. It hummed underneath his palm, almost like it was welcoming him. Suddenly it was visible again.

“ _Excuse me!_ ” said a voice from inside as the hatch opened. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? I’m working on some very delicate repairs and you have to come and feel up my ship and get her all confused with your gene and your—” the voice, which belonged to a boy about John’s age with loose curls flopping across his forehead, stopped short—“Your, your hair.”

John’s hand went to his head automatically, trying to smooth it down. “You speak English?”

“No,” the boy said, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “I had absolutely no way of deciphering your idiotic message, that’s why I’m here.”

“You got our message?”

“Didn’t I mention I was busy? Delicate repairs! My parents are going to ground me forever if they have to come rescue my stranded ass.”

The boy turned and stalked back into the ship. John followed.

“And what’s wrong with my jeans anyway?” he asked, looking down at his Wranglers.

“Ugh! Are you being stupid on purpose? Genes, not jeans!” the boy yelled unhelpfully. John sat back on one of the side benches and watched him work for a while, trying to figure out why he still felt a humming in the back of his brain.

“What’s your name?”

“Rodney,” the boy muttered without looking up.

“I’m John.”

“I know.”

“Oh, right, the message.”

He was silent for another moment before his curiosity got the better of his self-control.

“Where are you from?”

“A galaxy far, far away. Please stop talking. And stop flirting with my ship.”

“I just sat down. I haven’t done anything yet.”

Rodney snorted.

“And how do you know about Star Wars if you’re from space?”

“Please. We’ve been keeping tabs on earth for a long time. Thousands of years.”

“How old _are_ you?” John asked, sitting up straighter.

“Well, I haven’t personally been keeping tabs, just you know, my people. I’m twelve—” he jutted his chin—“But my planet has longer days, so I’m technically older than you. Probably.”

“How do keep tabs if you’re so far away? Shouldn’t we be dead for thousands of years by the time you get our message?”

“There’s a device my people built thousands of years ago that creates a stable wormhole. They’re all over the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies. It’s a Stargate. A gate to the stars? Look, I don’t have time to explain everything.”

“Wormhole? Cool.”

“Yes, it’s very cool, now can you just—”

“Shut up,” John jumped up suddenly, peering out at the sky. “Choppers. Can you make this thing invisible again?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do!” Rodney whined, all his bravado gone. “But you had to just keep talking and talking—“

John clamped his hand over Rodney's mouth. “Rodney. Calm down. Think.”

Rodney went bug-eyed and struggled. That weird blue light was glowing from his chest again. Then his eyes went bright and he escaped from John’s grasp.

“Okay, just do as I say, no questions.” He pulled John to the front of the ship and shoved him into the pilot’s seat. “Put your hands here on the controls and think ‘invisible’ as hard as you can.”

“This is your plan?” John muttered. But the second he laid his palms flat on the dash, a hologram display sprang to life and he could see the ship’s schematics glowing in front of him. He closed his eyes and concentrated.

"It's working!" Rodney exclaimed, clearly as surprised as John. John could hear him fiddling around with something behind him, but he didn't want to break his concentration. "Okay, that should hold now. You can relax."

"Those choppers are gonna see the crater your crash made. They'll keep searching the area," John pointed out. "Can we take this thing somewhere else?"

Rodney just grinned, the flare of blue light that had been emanating from his chest mellowing into soft, pale glow. "Ever been to space?"

Rodney took over the pilot's seat, shoving John into the co-pilot's chair against his protests.

"No, I'm not going to let you launch into orbit with absolutely no experience, sorry."

"You say 'sorry' like a Canadian," John observed. "That's the country to our north."

"Lots of planets have a north," Rodney muttered before shushing John so he could concentrate on the pre-flight checklist.

John tried to be quiet, but he really liked talking to Rodney. Especially when he could make him mad. It felt a little weird. Usually around his friends, John liked play the strong silent type, like he'd seen in old John Wayne movies on late night television. But around Rodney, he just felt the urge to grin non-stop. And his stomach felt funny, too, but that was probably just nervousness at the thought of going into space.

"How'd you get your parents to give you a spaceship anyway? I can't even drive a car ‘til I'm sixteen. Though my mom lets me back out of the driveway sometimes."

"Well," Rodney blushed, "They didn't exactly give it me—"

"You stole it?"

" _Borrowed!_ I'm going to give it back. I just, I wanted to get away for a while. My sister was being really annoying, and there's not all that many kids my age at home. They never really rebuilt the population after the war with the Wraith—"

"What's a Wraith?"

"—And I got your message through an experiment I was running on sending sensors through a gate bridge I devised, it's actually quite ingenious, and you sounded, well Earth sounded fun, so--"

"So you ran away from home?"

"It's stupid, I know."

"It's not stupid. I ran away once. When my mom and dad were fighting a lot. I get it," John could feel Rodney's earnest eyes on him, but he kept his gaze focused on the display in front of him, memorizing the sequence of Rodney's actions to he could duplicate it and fly the ship himself if given the chance.

"What happened?" Rodney asked.

"I kicked around in the woods for a few hours. They didn't even notice I was gone."

"Sorry."

"It's okay. My dad left, so everything's fine."

_2004, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado_

John smiled in spite of himself at the memory of his first time in space. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Colonel Sumner frowning at him. John knew he shouldn’t press his luck, but he couldn’t help raising an eyebrow at the Colonel. He’d learned early on in his career just how close he could get to the line before crossing into insubordination. The expedition shrink, Height-something, had told him it stemmed from unresolved feelings about his father’s abandonment. Like he needed a professional to tell him he had daddy issues.

The Colonel looked like he was about to say something, but he was interrupted by the grating metal of the first chevron locking into position. John tried to school his face, but he knew he was grinning like the first time he rode a Ferris wheel.

_1982, Northern California_

“I’m home!” John called, still hopped up on adrenaline from flying a spaceship. _Flying a spaceship!_

“Hey, honey,” Jules called from the kitchen, “Dinner’s almost ready, so come wash up.”

“Can my friend Rodney stay?” he asked, coming into the kitchen where his mom was chopping vegetables and Davey was playing with the Speak & Spell at the kitchen table. “He just moved here.” Rodney hovered in the doorway.

“If it’s okay with his parents, sure,” his mom said, ruffling John’s hair as he headed to the sink.

“They don’t care what I do,” Rodney said.

“Well,” she gave a slight frown before schooling her features into a welcoming smile, “Maybe I should give them a call.”

“They’re still at work,” John rushed in. “So Rodney’d just be home all alone. We wouldn’t want that, would we?”

“Save the charm for Mrs. Sneider, Johnny,” she smirked, “But I guess that’s fine, then.”

Dinner was mac and cheese, the good kind from the oven, but they had to eat a handful of carrot sticks and celery before they could have the blue Jell-O for dessert. Rodney ate three servings of Jell-O, and would have eaten more if John’s mom hadn’t cut him off. Rodney’s wide mouth turned blue, nearly the same shade as when his chest had glowed earlier, though slightly darker than his bright blue eyes.

“John,” his mother said softly. He jumped, startled. “It’s time Rodney went home.”

“Okay, I’ll walk him halfway.”

“Okay.”

“Thank you for dinner,” Rodney said, sliding off his chair and grabbing his grey jacket. John noticed for the first time that Rodney’s clothes were just different enough from earth clothes to be a little weird. Hopefully his mom wouldn’t notice. If she asked, John would just tell her Rodney was Canadian.

“I guess I’ll just sleep in my ship,” Rodney said when the back door shut behind them.

“I’ve got a trundle bed in my room that’ll be way more comfortable,” John said. “We’ll just circle back and sneak you in through the laundry room.”

“What’s a trundle bed?”

“It’s a bed under my bed that pulls out when you need it.”

“Oh.”

Rodney didn’t say anything else as they rounded the block. They made it up the stairs when Davey came out the bathroom, hair still damp from his bath, and caught them.

“Mom said he was supposed to go home,” he said.

“Davey, you can’t tell her,” John whispered, pushing Rodney up the hall and into his bedroom before the shutting the door and going back to Davey.

“Mom!” Davey called.

“ _Davey!_ ” John said desperately, “He’s got nowhere else to go, just _please_ —”

“What’s going on, Davey?” Jules popped her around the bend in the staircase. Davey gave John a hard glare.

“Johnny’s home,” was all he said.

“Thanks for letting me know,” she smiled. “Time to get in bed. I’ll be up to read you a story in a few minutes.”

“Two stories?” Davey asked.

“We’ll see.”

John escaped to his room.

***

He woke in the middle of the night to the sound of sniffling and a faint glow suffusing the room in soft blue light. Rodney had buried his head under the covers, making him look like a lumpy nightlight.

“Rodney?” John whispered. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m not okay,” Rodney whispered back fiercely, muffled by the blankets. “I’m billions of light years away from home with a broken sublight engine. If I can’t get that fixed I won’t be able to make it back to my gate bridge and the Stargate on your planet is deep underground at a heavily guarded Air Force base, so I’ll basically be stuck on this ass-backwards planet whose one redeeming quality is a strange blue gelatin dessert—”

“Rodney. Breathe.” John patted the blue lump in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. The lump shifted, and Rodney’s head emerged, his hair plastered to his forehead and his face streaked with tears, reflecting the light. “You’ll fix it. You’re a genius.”

“I know that.” He stuck out his chin, defying John to take back his words.

“Just go to sleep. You can’t be a genius on no sleep.”

Rodney didn’t say anything, but he laid his head on the pillow again, still looking at John. John shifted his pillow to the edge of his bed, letting the arm he had patted Rodney with remain hanging off the side. He didn’t say anything when Rodney took his hand, but he didn’t take it back, either. Eventually, Rodney’s eyes drooped shut and John closed his own and drifted off to sleep.

_2004, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado_

As the eighth chevron encoded and members of the expedition began stepping though the Stargate, John gave a quick thought to what he was leaving behind. It didn’t feel like much since his mom had died shortly after his eighteenth birthday. Dave had gone to live with their dad in his Virginia mansion. John had walked into the Air Force ROTC office and never looked back. He felt a brief pang of regret over loosing touch with Dave, but John really hadn’t forgiven him for forgiving their father. Maybe things could be different if John ever made it made it back through the gate, but right now all he could think about was the life waiting for him on the other side.

_1982, Northern California_

John pretended to be sick the next morning while Rodney hid in his closet. After his mom and Davey left, John made them scrambled eggs and toast while Rodney got right to work. They’d parked the ship, still cloaked, on the vacant lot behind John’s house. John brought out the food and they ate sitting cross-legged on the metal floor, comparing little things about life on earth and where Rodney was from.

“Like,” Rodney was saying though a mouthful of eggs, “Your bed is really wide. Ours are much narrower. I don’t know why anyone would need all that space.”

“Really? Mine’s just a twin. That’s the smallest size, except for like, baby beds.”

“But the ceilings here are a lot lower. It makes me claustrophobic. And we have way more windows. Huge windows of colored glass.”

“We only have stuff like that in special places, like really big churches.”

After breakfast, Rodney got back to work. John watched, asking the occasional question, but not as many as he wanted. Though sometimes it was fun just annoy Rodney into a lengthy explanation.

Eventually they got hungry again and went back to the house for a break. It was much later than John had realized; school would be getting out now. But his mom had arranged for Davey to go home with a friend since John wouldn’t be there to pick him up. They were just making sandwiches—“Trust me,” John said, “Turkey is the best lunch meat.”—when the doorbell rang. John pushed Rodney into the pantry, shutting the slatted door in his face before answering the front door.

“Mrs. Sneider insisted I bring you your homework,” Rajeev said, pushing past him. “She said you better show your work and your little ‘illness’ wasn’t going to get you out of the quiz tomorrow. The air quotes were hers.”

“I’m just here ‘cuz my mom will make me do chores if I go home,” Darren said cheerfully, opening the fridge and unscrewing a bottled soda. “Ugh, why is this root beer clear?”

“My mom thinks it’s healthier.” John sighed as they made themselves comfortable.

“It’s weird,” Darren said, taking another gulp.

“Got any chips?” Rajeev asked, heading toward the pantry.

“No!” John yelled, but Rajeev had already opened the door.

“John,” Rajeev said calmly, “Why is this dude in your pantry?”

Rodney stared back, a mix of belligerent and awkward.

“Guys, this is Rodney. Rodney, this is Rajeev and Darren. You heard them on the recording with me. Rodney got our message.”

“That’s cool. Doesn’t explain the pantry thing, but we can circle back to that,” Rajeev said. “Where are you from, Rodney?”

Rodney smirked and pointed a finger upwards.

“You’re from upstairs?” Darren asked.

Rodney rolled his eyes and pointed higher. “I’m from outer space, dumbass.”

Darren spit soda all over the kitchen table. It turns out clear soda is just as sticky as the dyed stuff.

***

Rajeev and Darren were suitably impressed with Rodney’s spaceship, and he took on a faint glow as he showed them its features. Then Rodney and Rajeev got into a deeply technical discussion and startling fiddling around with crystals. John would have been jealous, but he was too busy keeping Darren from touching anything.

John finally got rid of them just before his mom came home, and he was sweating by the time he had rushed back to the house, up the stairs, and back into bed. He heard her key in the lock before he managed to get back into his pajamas, so he pulled the covers up to his ears.

“You’re still a little warm,” she said, her cool hand on his forehead. “I’ll heat up some dinner and bring it up in a bit.”

“Okay. I’m really hungry. Could you bring a lot? Like, enough for two people? I’m _really_ hungry.”

She raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

John had to wait until after she brought him dinner to slip back out to the vacant lot. Rodney was still working, but he dragged him away. The night was getting cold and Rodney looked dead tired from working all day.

He hid in the closet again when John’s mom came to get the dirty dishes. Instead of just grabbing the tray and heading back downstairs, she sat on the edge of John’s bed.

“Feeling any better?”

“A little. Do I have to go to the school tomorrow?”

“We’ll see. Are you going to have your friend Rodney over again soon?”

“I don’t know, maybe.” John picked at a loose thread on his quilt.

“He seems like a nice boy.”

John snorted. Rodney was a lot of things, but _nice_?

“You know John, sometimes boys, well, they have feelings about other boys just like some boys have feelings about girls. I know this is a very confusing time for you, but I just want you know that I love you no matter what, okay?” The words spilled out her in a rush and she seemed very relieved to have said them.

John stared down at his blanket. Part of him wanted to insist that he didn’t know what she was talking about, that he didn’t have those feelings. He really wanted to stop blushing. He wanted to lie, but he just mumbled, “Okay.”

She kissed his forehead before standing up. “Take a shower before you go to bed, you’ll feel better when you’re clean.”

It was a long moment after she left, silently closing the door behind her, before Rodney came out of the closet, red faced and a little wide eyed. He opened his mouth to speak, but John interrupted him.

“I’m gonna shower. Make sure you duck into the closet if you hear anyone coming, just to be safe.”

Rodney nodded, and John threw back his covers and grabbed clean pajamas as quickly as he could.

***

John went to school the next day but he had a hard time concentrating. Rodney stayed hidden until the house was empty before getting back to work on his ship. Darren and Rajeev peppered John with questions as they ate lunch in the privacy of the A/V Club room, but most of his answers consisted of “Don’t know,” accompanied by a signature John Sheppard laconic shrug.

After school, John picked up Davey at the elementary school and took him to Rodney’s ship.

“Don’t touch anything!” Rodney said, barely looking up.

Of course Davey had already gone to the front immediately and laid both hands on the control panel.

“Davey, wait!” John called after him, but nothing happened. The controls stayed inert. “Huh.”

“He must not have the gene,” Rodney said.

“Gene?”

“My people’s technology is activated by a certain sequence in our genome. Some humans have it because way back in the day, before we left for the Pegasus galaxy, there was some, er, cross-pollination.” Rodney blushed.

“Does that mean we’re related?” John asked, horrified.

“Only very, _very_ distantly. About as closely related as most people of European descent are related to Genghis Khan.”

“Well, that’s a relief. I guess.” It was John’s turn to blush. “Are you hungry?”

“Gods, yes.”

They spent the afternoon playing games on John’s computer and eating the rest of the blue Jell-O. Rodney stayed for dinner again and John tried really hard not to think about the conversation he’d had with his mom the night before and the fact that Rodney had heard it all from the closet.

After they escaped to “walk Rodney halfway home,” Rodney insisted on going back to his ship, because he “was so close, he just had a few kinks to work out before the sublight systems would be back online.” John said, “Okay, he would bring some snacks and keep him company after his mom had gone to bed.”

A few hours later, armed with a plastic grocery bag of cold clear sodas, Cool Ranch Doritos, and a few cans of chocolate pudding from the pantry, he snuck out the back door. Rodney tore into the pudding as soon as John got there, gradually moving on to the chips and soda as he worked. John wasn’t feeling very hungry, but he ate a few chips out of solidarity.

He started to doze where he slouched in the pilot’s seat (he really liked that seat), when Rodney woke him with a cry of triumph. He was glowing again, his eyes bright and his smile a wide expanse across his face. “That’s great,” John said, trying to sound supportive. “So I guess this is goodbye.”

Rodney’s face fell immediately, as if he hadn’t thought through the ramifications. “You could come with me?”

“No, I can’t.”

“I guess that’s true.”

“So long, Rodney,” John said, grabbing him by the shirt and pressing their mouths together in an inexpert kiss. Rodney tasted like cool ranch and vanilla cream. When he pulled back, Rodney stared at him in mute surprise. John just gave a lopsided grin and ran out the back of the ship. He stopped when he was about twenty yards away, waiting to see the telltale signs of the cloaked ship departing. He slouched against the gate to his own backyard, feeling like he’d run a five-minute mile, instead of a few steps. After a long moment, the dust started to stir. He shielded his eyes as a gust was blown into his face. Even though he had no way of knowing if Rodney could see him, he waved his arms wildly and whooped into the night.

_2004, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado_

John was one of the last through the gate, his mind plagued with last minute doubts. What if Rodney didn’t remember him? What if John was one of those pathetic people who blew an adolescent attachment and a single kiss completely out of proportion? What if he was wrong, and Rodney wasn’t even from Atlantis? It had sounded plausible enough when he first heard about the expedition to the lost city in the Pegasus Galaxy. John had a feeling in his gut that Atlantis was the city Rodney had told him about over scrambled eggs and burnt toast on a sunny morning long, long ago.

 _Well, there was only one way to find out,_ he told himself, squaring his shoulders and stepping into the event horizon. The room he entered was brightly lit, sun filtering in though tall stained glass windows. He quickly took in a delegation on the tall steps, smiling benevolently down on the other members of his expedition as they milled around and gawked at their surroundings.

“Oh my gods, what took you so damn long?” a loud voice complained (deeper in timbre, but still so familiar), and there was Rodney on the balcony above him, beaming down like it would break his face; a little broader, a lot less hair, but still the same clear blue eyes looking at John like he held the secrets to the universe in the palm of his hand. John grinned back, home at last.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this story happened because I finally watched Stranger Things about a month ago, and as soon I finished it I had a strong desire to watch E.T., one of my favorite movies. After that, I started working on this. I hope you enjoyed it! Comments and kudos appreciated!
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr, @mattygrovesfic --also, how do I link? :D


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